Should You Include Grains In your Pets Diet?

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Should you include grains in your pet's diet? Mother Nature knows best...

There's conflicting information about grains in pet food!. Some advocate no grain but lots of vegetables and some believe a diet based on just raw meaty bones is all a pet needs. My view is the same as Mother Nature’s, a balance of vegetable matter, partly fermented grains, organ and muscle meat and a raw meat bone, is the perfect diet. So what are the facts about grain?



Fact 1: Dogs and cats ingest grains in the gut content of live prey when they catch and eat it.


Fact 2: The occasional negative stigma about grains was actually caused by dry food manufacturers using grain as a low cost filler and way to get higher protein levels, even though the protein was not fully digestible by canines or felines.


Fact 3: Highly refined starch products, including cereals that are ground into flour and often used to bulk out processed pet foods providing 'false protein', aren't suited to cats' and dogs' digestive systems. They offer little nutritional value, with high calories and refined sugar content.


Fact 4: While cats and dogs can't digest whole grains, they can digest grains that have been chewed, partially digested and fermented at 38.5 degrees C in the gut of their prey.




Fact 5: While cats and dogs can't easily digest intact plant material, they can consume pre-digested plant material and decaying or composting vegetables and fruit. This roughage assists normal bowl movement an anal gland use.


Fact 6: Classed an omnivore, when a dog catches its prey it will eat the gut content of the animal, filled with semi-digested plant and grain matter, followed by muscle and organ meat and bones. This order of consumption suggests grain and vegetable matter plays a vital role in their health. Canines thrive on a diet consisting of 15 to 25 percent vegetable matter diet, the balance comprising meat and bones.


Fact 7: Classed a carnivore, a cat can't live on grains and vegetables alone and requires meat for survival, their diet will contain 10 and 15 percent grain, vegetable and fruit matter.


Fact 8: Grain very rarely causes skin problems. In most cases these conditions are the result of inadequate nutrition resulting in compromised immunity caused by mass exposure to low grade ingredients in somedry foods. Build the immunity and eliminate exposure to common dry food ingredients – like chicken –and in most instances skin problems disappear. There are some low allergen dry foods now that do not use chicken.


The take away: While dogs and cats flourish on a predominantly a fresh muscle and organ meat diet, carbohydrates are a valuable source of pet nutrition provided they are not heat processed or bleached, and they are cracked or crushed, pre-fermented for digestibility and make up a much smaller portion of the diet than the meat content.